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Could a Law Protecting Endangered Animals Stop New Oil Drilling?


WASHINGTON — A coalition of environmental groups sued the Biden administration Wednesday for failing to consider the damage to endangered species from emissions produced by oil and gas drilling on public lands.

Using a new legal argument based on the Endangered Species Act, groups argue that oil burned from a well in Wyoming contributes to atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is warming the planet and destroying coral reefs in Florida and polar bears in the Arctic. and seals in Hawaii.

If the coalition is successful, the more than 3,500 drilling permits issued during the Biden administration could be revoked, making permits much more difficult in the future.

“Science, unfortunately, is pretty clear that climate change is in every way a disaster for the planet, including endangered species,” said Brett Hartl, director of government affairs at the Center for Biodiversity. leading the way case He applied to the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

“We need to stop the autopilot-like approach of leasing fossil fuels on public land,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior declined to comment on the incident.

Oil and gas industry officials noted that for each drilling permit granted, the government is already conducting environmental analyzes and that opponents have many opportunities to challenge the decisions. Industry officials said the lawsuit was a backdoor effort to curb fossil fuel development and would hurt the economy.

“They won’t be satisfied until federal oil and gas shuts down completely, but that option is not supported by law,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas companies.

“Unable to persuade Congress to change the law, they are trying to use the courts’ energy to reject Americans and raise prices,” he said. “Closing federal oil and gas does nothing to address climate change, it just shifts production to private lands or overseas.”

The International Energy Agency, the world’s leading energy agency, said nations must stop developing new oil and gas fields and building new coal-fired power stations for global warming to stay within relatively safe limits.

The lawsuit is the latest clash of environmentalists who want to keep fossil fuels “in the ground” and force President Biden to deliver on his campaign promise to end new oil and gas drilling leases. Biden moved to suspend new leases in the early days of his presidency, but legal challenges from Republican states and the oil industry thwarted that effort.

Early next week, the Biden administration is expected to complete its first land lease sales for drilling on public lands in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and more than 131,000 acres in Wyoming alone. The government also opened up 80 million acres of land in the Gulf of Mexico for drilling.

The case faces long prospects, but experts have described it as an ambitious effort that could force the government to rethink how it assesses the climate-damaging potential of each new drilling permit.

The lawsuit is filed over the annulment of decisions based on a 2008 legal opinion written by David Bernhardt, who was chief adviser to the Home Office under President George W. Bush and would later run the agency in the Trump administration. Mr. Bernhardt declared that the Department of Home Affairs had no obligation to examine the impact of a proposed action to increase carbon uptake into the atmosphere on an endangered plant or animal.

Mr. Bernhardt wrote at the time: “Science cannot say that a small global temperature rise that could be produced by an action under investigation would manifest itself in the location or habitat of a listed species.”

Scientists and environmentalists said this position is still largely correct. But they also said that this is an impossible standard – like knowing which pack of cigarettes triggers a smoker’s lung cancer.

“It’s a completely wrong way to think about it,” said John J. Wiens, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. He and other researchers published a study In 2020, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that one-third of plant and animal species could disappear within 50 years due to climate change.

Dr. “The more emissions, the more warming types risk,” Wiens said. “It doesn’t matter if we don’t know that this particular well in Wyoming led to extinction. We know what the general pattern is.”

Jessica A. Wentz, a senior researcher at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said the idea that a clear line is needed from pollution to danger is “a common misrepresentation of climate science that is often used to justify inaction on climate change.” ”

The question of whether climate change is raising the risk of extinction for the green sea turtle, Florida’s Key deer and other species has been resolved, he said. Ms Wentz said the real test would be whether the proposed drilling could affect a species by adding such significant amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

The lawsuit states that oil and gas production from public lands emits 9 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases and 1 percent of global emissions, according to analysis by the Bureau of Land Management. The lawsuit estimates that the nearly 3,500 drilling permits approved by the Biden administration would release as much as 600 million tons of greenhouse gases over the life of the wells.

Another law, the National Environmental Policy Act, requires the government to review the impacts of proposed projects on climate change, but does not oblige an agency to reject a bridge, pipeline, or highway because of its consequences.

There is a stronger assumption that under the Endangered Species Act, however, if a project is found to endanger a threatened plant or animal, the agency should reconsider the project.

Environmental groups said that requiring the government to simply understand the effects of increased emissions on a species could fundamentally slow or hinder drilling permits.

Mr. Bernhardt said in an interview that his legal opinion and a keynote from the director of the United States Geological Survey were “written with an incredible amount of work and understanding in law and science.”

Mark D. Myers, who served as director of the USGS in 2008 and wrote a note outlining the difficulties of relating emissions to consequences, helped form the basis of Mr. Bernhardt’s legal opinion. At the time, management said it was reviewing the opinion with top scientists across the agency.

Mr. Myers said he believes fossil fuel emissions pose a major threat to the planet. But he described the Endangered Species Act as a complex law and “the wrong tool to effect a change in our global emissions models.”

Environmental lawmaker Holly D. Doremus said the midterm elections are approaching and the case could force the Biden administration into a new high-profile discussion about the future of drilling, as Republicans blame Democrats for record high gas prices. Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Right now it’s a pretty troubling time for any administration to say, ‘We’re reducing the availability of fossil fuels,'” he said.



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